It was founded by Re­becca Guay, known for her work on Magic: The Gath­er­ing and other high-pro­file clients. She says that, “SmArt School brings some of the most recog­nised, cel­e­brated artists and il­lus­tra­tors work­ing to­day to the small-scale teach­ing for­mat. In th­ese small classes, stu­dents truly men­tor in­ter­ac­tively with th­ese great artists in very per­sonal, pro­duc­tive ways to the great ben­e­fit of their work and their pos­si­ble suc­cess­ful fu­ture in the art world or il­lus­tra­tion in­dus­try.”

Un­like the more tra­di­tional on­line school struc­ture that typ­i­cally re­volves around pre-recorded tu­to­rial videos with space for cri­tique, SmArt School’s classes are taught live us­ing GoToMeet­ing. Classes are taught over 13 ses­sions across three months, priced at $2,500/£1,767 for each course, and while the ma­jor­ity of them fo­cus on il­lus­tra­tion tech­niques in a more tra­di­tional teach­ing en­vi­ron­ment, there are also boot­camp classes for new stu­dents who haven’t had com­pre­hen­sive fig­ure-draw­ing lessons or any other foun­da­tional ex­pe­ri­ences.

Re­becca: “In our small classes – no more than 10 peo­ple – stu­dents truly get men­tored by great artists.”

The school of­fers a full men­tor­ship course that in­cludes 13 ses­sions with Donato Gian­cola.